Four principals retire

Published 1:00 am, Friday, June 23, 2006

DANBURY - Nancy Gurtner asked her son if he would visit Connecticut as part of his business trip to the East Coast this week. He didn't give her an answer.

Geoffrey Gurtner
did, however, come from California to join students and staff at
King Street Primary School
in surprising his mom, a veteran Danbury principal, at a retirement party Monday.
Gurtner closed out 17 years as a principal in Danbury and 40 years in education.
Meanwhile this week,
Greg Scails
was named the new principal of
Mill Ridge Intermediate School
. He returns to Danbury after seven years to fill the vacancy created when
Helena Nitowski
was named principal of the new regional magnet school.
Two other elementary principals in the city,
Josephine Perry
of St.
Peter School
and Sharon Quish of St.
Joseph School
, also leave their posts this summer.
Gurtner said she loved her job and found it a hard decision to retire.
"I want to be a grandmother," Gurtner said. One of her sons died last year. Geoffrey has three young boys.
"I worked so many years with other people's children that I want to enjoy my children and grandchildren," she said.
Scails, who lives in Bethel, spent the past four years as principal of
Nichols Elementary School
in Stratford and the three years before that as assistant principal of a middle school there.
From 1984 to 1999, he was an elementary teacher in Missouri, New Mexico, Brookfield and Danbury.
"This is a chance to come back to Danbury," Scails said. "Danbury prepared me to enter administration and now I am able to use the skill sets I learned in Danbury."
Scails and his wife, Lisa, have three children, a son who completed his freshman year at
Pratt Institute
in New York, and two daughters who will enter fourth and ninth grades in the fall.
"I value kids. I value education," Scails said. "Especially in the global world, students need a firm grasp of literacy and of what it takes to be a success."
Quish leaves after 27½ years at St. Joseph's, including her last 10 years as principal. She said the job has been a balancing act, to attend necessary meetings while being available to students and staff.
"I love this school but it's time to go on to other things. St. Joseph's has been my life for 27½ years. I see myself in every room," she said.
The school has grown. Already there are 314 students registered for the fall, compared to this year's enrollment of 286. She said it means there will be two classes for every grade.
In addition, since she's been there, the school added separate art and music rooms and a new science lab.
"We have a wonderful rapport with the parish priest. It's a family community and we have wonderful, supportive parents," she said.
Her three children and four grandchildren are calling her, she said, but she'll take "volumes of memories" with her.
Margaret Dames
, Superintendent of Schools for the Diocese of Bridgeport, said she's conducting searches for new principals.
Each search has a committee made up of the pastor of each church, two teachers and two parents from each school, and a principal from another school. Dames said the committees will recommend the candidates for the final screening.
The changes at the top of the four elementary schools highlight the growing challenge of school districts to fill their leadership posts.
The
National Association of Elementary School Principals
, based in Virginia, supports the more than 30,000 elementary and middle school principals.
In a press release on the association's Web site, executive director
Vincent Ferrandino
wrote in 2003 that for more than a decade candidates for principal positions have been in critically short supply nationwide.
Association studies predict the turnover rate for this decade will likely exceed 40 percent.
"Principals today are tackling tough curriculum standards, educating an increasingly diverse student population, shouldering responsibilities that once belonged at home or in the community, and then facing possible termination if their schools don't show regular improvement," Ferrandino wrote.
"It is not difficult to understand why qualified people, mainly teachers, do not want this job. It requires many more hours, daunting responsibilities, and sometimes even less pay - when measured on a daily rate - compared to a veteran teacher's salary."